CU-Boulder Environment and Sustainability Visioning Committee named

Provost Russell Moore today announced the charge and membership of a visioning committee to consider future opportunities for synergies and collaboration between University of Colorado Boulder environment and sustainability research and academic programs. Sharon Collinge, director of environmental studies and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, will chair the Environment and Sustainability Visioning Committee, or ESVC.

“I’ve asked the committee to investigate the best practices and structures that exist in the study of the environment and sustainability at leading universities and assess what new programs and opportunities might be available to the Boulder campus,” Moore said. “I’d like the committee to consider how those new opportunities might influence the stature of CU-Boulder in these areas, and how the proposed new programs will benefit undergraduate and graduate students in the near, intermediate and distant future.”

The committee will conduct an inventory of the types of environmental and sustainability research and teaching programs that exist in all units across the CU-Boulder campus; identify emerging issues in environmental and sustainability research that the campus is well positioned to address through existing programs and the development of new programs; provide a high-level assessment of cross-disciplinary and cross-academic unit synergies that are currently captured and ones that are missed; and provide an assessment of what new scholarly and teaching opportunities might be realized through collaborations between existing programs and the investment in new programs.

Faculty, staff and student stakeholders, as well as interested external constituents, will be consulted during the visioning process, Moore said.

The committee will present Moore with a preliminary report by the end of January 2013, and a final report and set of recommendations by no later than the end of March 2013.

Image: Professor Diane McKnight at the Mountain Research Station for the University of Colorado Boulder.